3.10.2006

Hovering Moms

Took my 4 year old daughter to her little gymnastics class at the YMCA today. We're not training her to be the next Olga Korbot or anything. Its just a little something to do with her and her brother on Dad's day off.

There is one Mom whose son is in both her class, and my son's sports jam class, that just hovers over her poor kid for the whole class. She sits with her eyes transfixed to him. The second he steps out of line, she is out there to help him. Then she parks herself about 5 feet away, and about every 30 seconds, pops up to help him, or put him back in line, or tell him what to do. All the other kids are out there with the teacher on their own and doing fine. And he would be too, if his Mom would just let him be. And not to start picking on 3 year-olds, but she had this poor kid dressed like Todd and Lisa Lubner. Sweat pants pulled up almost to his chest.

I see a lot of this behavior actually. My sister, and a couple of my friends' wives behave the same way. They are in their kids' faces constantly. Sure its good they are attentive to their kids, but you have to give them some room to learn things for themselves. Once you have kids you start to see all kinds of examples of bad parenting. Not just the obvious things like Britney driving with her kid on her lap. Some of this parental behavior on the opposite extreme is nearly as bad.

On your photo, Cranky: when I was learning to walk, the leash was employed. The problem for my parents is that I have a memory that goes back to around nine months old. And I can tell you from ﬁrst-hand experience that the leash hurts like hell when you are yanked up. As to the hovering parent, I knew one guy like that. At high school, his mother did detention for him so he did not have to be put through the hardship of staying after school. High school, for Chrissakes. The guy should be in his 30s now, and surfs a lot, so I am not going to sign this post with my real name. Nice enough kid, but we used to worry about him, because we all wanted him to be independent of this inﬂuence.